San Sebastián may be the only city on earth whose key sights include man-made mountains of canapés, seafood skewers, and creamy croquetas—finger food as far as the eye can see. I’m talking about pintxos, the elaborate miniature dishes that have long played protagonist in this idyllic coastal city’s tourist scene.

Pintxos are a Basque tradition, and they can be as simple as a skewer of canned tuna and a pickled pepper or as involved as perfectly portioned seared foie gras served over warm apple compote. Some are dessert: It would be a travesty to leave San Sebastián without trying La Viña’s viral “burnt” cheesecake.

Pintxos represent a century of culinary evolution in this corner of the Basque Country, and in my 14 years living here and writing about food, I’ve come to think of them as a way of life. Stopping at a bar for a snack and a glass of wine is a daily ritual for locals—myself among them.

The beauty of San Sebastián’s pintxo scene is that it takes well to a greatest-hits roundup: Virtually every bar here has a signature dish locals devour before hitting up the next watering hole. To that end, what follows is an edible roadmap that will take you from the La Concha Beach promenade to the charming old town and across the river to residential Gros, where I live. Be sure to pace yourself—a bit of restraint will ensure you maximize the number of pit stops. 

Gilda at Casa Vallés

Was the gilda the first pintxo, as so many guides breezily claim? No, but it is the holy grail of the banderilla (“skewer”) genre. When pintxos were invented about 100 years ago, they were essentially snacks strung together on a toothpick. The gilda was among them, a holy trinity of manzanilla olive, meaty salt-cured anchovy, and hot pickled guindilla pepper. To try it, stop into its alleged birthplace, Casa Vallés, a frozen-in-time bar founded in 1942 in the city center. The name “gilda” comes from the Rita Hayworth character in the eponymous movie, so called because both were verde (green, which in Spanish also means salacious), picante (spicy, in the sexy sense), and salado (salty, as in funny or charming). The memorable moniker has helped keep the pintxo on everybody’s lips—and in their stomachs—all these years. 

Tortilla Española at Antonio Bar

Beloved across Spain, tortilla española may be the country’s de facto national dish, but few cities take the oozy potato omelet as seriously as San Sebastián. A good tortilla—ingredients: potato, eggs, onions, and oil—embodies the phrase “greater than the sum of its parts,” and the tiny, nondescript Antonio Bar serves what I consider to be the best in town. Antonio’s version is tall, dark, and handsome, thanks to a whopping 28 eggs, extra-caramelized onions, and perfectly confited potatoes.

Ensaladilla Rusa at Bar Ezkurra

Spain’s other potato-fueled obsession is ensaladilla rusa, the cool, mayo-rich potato salad locals eat for sad desk lunches, at Michelin-starred meals out on the town, and every occasion in between. For me, the best ensaladilla contains nothing more than potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and a good sprinkling of flaked canned tuna. Ezkurra agrees, and the bar’s secret is in the sauce: a light, homemade mayo recipe passed down from the current generation’s uncle Alejandro Balda. But don’t take my word for it—trust all the customers who cumulatively go through up to 175 pounds of the famed pintxo each day.

La Jardinera at Bar Txepetxa

Boquerones, or vinegar-cured white anchovies, are a pintxo fixture. Shiny and silver, with a white underflesh, they are the gateway anchovy for the anchovy-dubious—and they’re the specialty at this Parte Vieja cubbyhole. Txepetxa’s anchovies are phenomenally fresh (read: not fishy) and marinated in a top-secret potion. Every anchovy pintxo starts with two glimmering fillets on a warm toasted baguette slice, but from there it’s choose your own adventure: There are more than a dozen toppings and condiments on offer, from spider crab cream to blueberry sauce to—my favorite—crunchy pepper-and-onion jardinera. 

Croqueta de Pollo at Bar Urkabe

The important thing to know about croquetas is that there are as many recipes as there are cooks in Spain—and legally speaking, none can be better than one’s own grandmother’s. A perk of being an outsider is that I’m free to rank San Sebastián’s best breaded-and-fried béchamel bites with no fear of finger-wagging. That’s how I wound up at Bar Urkabe in Gros, the kind of locals-only spot where everybody is greeted with a smile and a wave. Here, they simmer the bechamel for their chicken-studded croquetas in the same pan they use to sear the breasts, which gives the croquetas a homey, just-like-mamá’s flavor.

La Delicia at La Espiga

I like to pintxo-hop the way Basques do: one bar, one pintxo, one glass of wine y vámonos. But “La delicia” is my exception to the rule. Is it the way the salt-cured anchovy balances the bite of finely chopped onion parsley vinaigrette? Or the impossibly creamy homemade mayonnaise enlivened by the optional (say yes!) splash of Worcestershire sauce? I don’t know, but I can never have just one delicia. You won’t find this proprietary bite anywhere but La Espiga, the city’s longest-running pintxo bar—so elbow your way to the front, and let them know what you came for.

Pimiento Relleno de Bonito at Bar Martínez

Tinned bonito del norte (albacore) is a pantry staple in the Basque Country, where it’s line-caught and canned in seaside villages. At Bar Martínez, this high-quality tuna gets flaked and folded into a thick tartar sauce, then stuffed into a sweet, roasted, ruby-red piquillo pepper. Perched on a baguette slice and drizzled generously with sharp sherry vinegar and olive oil, the pimiento relleno is a San Sebastián classic, and the poster child of the oldest family-run bar in the Parte Vieja.

La Txalupa at Bar Bergara

In the 1990s, pintxos had a heyday—Basque nueva cocina was at a creative fever pitch, international ingredients were finding their way into bar bites, and pintxos with splashy names were the law of the land. La Txalupa epitomizes the era: “Boat” in Basque, the txalupa is an oval hull of pastry topped with a duxelle of onions, oyster mushrooms, and creamy cava sauce. Bits of shrimp get folded in at the very end and cook in the residual heat, and then the whole thing is topped with grated Swiss and broiled until golden. The Txalupa is the taste of many locals’ childhoods, and you’ll only find it at this legendary bar in Gros.

Foie a La Plancha at La Cuchara de San Telmo

Scoring a perfectly seared piece of foie gras for a few bucks sounds like a fantasy in this economy, but that’s the must-order pintxo at this sardine-can old-town mainstay open since 1999. The caramelized sliver of duck liver comes with a simple swipe of nothing-added applesauce, whose tart sweetness cuts the fat. Chef Alex Montiel’s secret? A long, slow sear on the plancha (griddle). Drizzled with a Basque cider reduction at the last second, this three-ingredient pintxo is an ode to understated luxury.

Risotto de Idiazabal at Borda Berri

Risotto may be Italian in origin, but pound for pound, this bar in the old town likely sells more of it than any Milanese restaurant. To make it, Borda Berri starts with orzo (as opposed to the traditional rice), which gets toasted until nutty and cooked in wine and vegetable broth in traditional risotto style. The chalkboard menu reads “risotto de Idiazabal,” but Chef Marc Clua whisks in three types of the Basque raw sheep’s milk cheese—fresh, aged, and smoked—for a complex, layered flavor. A drizzle of parsley oil ups the Basque factor and lends a pop of color to this crowd-pleasing pintxo.

Vieira Asada Sobre Ajoblanco at Casa Urola 

A walk through La Bretxa market’s row of fishmongers is a parade of whole fish with the shiniest scales and glistening eyes, tanks of live lobsters and shrimp, and shells large and small. My favorite dish incorporating these fresher-than-fresh shellfish comes from Casa Urola, a block from the market. I’m talking about the vieira asada (grilled scallop), which gets a kiss of flame and comes atop a cool and creamy ajoblanco, Spain’s ancient silky almond-bread soup. Local celebrity chef Pablo Loureiro dresses this modern pintxo in a simple yet revelatory coffee vinaigrette, then sprinkles on some pistachios and almonds plus a bit of nori for crunch. The result is a dish worthy of any white tablecloth.

Gazta-Tarta at La Viña

There’s little to say about Basque burnt cheesecake that hasn’t been covered in nearly half-a-million Instagram posts, so I’ll keep this brief: La Viña, where the cheesecake style was invented, remains well worth the hype. Cheesecakes resting in their burned parchment springforms deck the walls of this traditional, family-run bar that always serves the pintxo the same way: in two thin slivers per portion. No matter how many versions of the dessert you’ve tried, it’s worth ending your pintxo hop with the original, a creamy, tangy cheesecake stripped down the bare essentials. Expect neither crust nor garnish—gazta-tarta is all about the eggy custard, lightly burnished around the edges and best enjoyed with a glass of txakoli or Pedro Ximenez sherry. 

The post The Pintxo Bars I Can’t Live Without in San Sebastián appeared first on Saveur.

Until a few decades ago, Barcelona wasn’t what you’d call a first-class food town. Yes, it had great raw materials, marvelous markets, and a rib-sticking regional cuisine with medieval roots. Yet often I found, during my earliest forays into the city back in the 1980s, that restaurant-eating in the Catalan capital was uninspiring: The choices were basically calorific classics (the all-in stew escudella being omnipresent), rice dishes, or char-grilled fish.   

Then the 1992 Olympics happened, and Barcelona morphed practically overnight into a scintillating culture-hub—and the city’s food scene followed suit. All at once there was East-West fusion food and Ferran Adrià-inspired molecular gastronomy—rather too much of that, maybe—but also a brave new vision of contemporary Catalan cuisine. It was a great time to be writing about Barcelona food—and I did, in a large-format cookbook for Williams-Sonoma (Foods of the World: Barcelona), which 20 years later reads almost like a work of culinary nostalgia.   

What came next rolled in like waves on a Mediterranean beach. The 2010s brought food-trucks, supper-clubs and pop-ups; restaurants that only served dessert; Japo-Hispanic sushi joints … In recent years, Barcelona has gotten big into natural wine bars, cocktail bars to conjure with, and teeny-weeny market stalls with zippy zero-kilometer cooking. Tapas—which were never one of Barcelona’s traditional strengths—have finally triumphed, opening the kitchen door to fresh fads in snacking—none more appetizing, in my view, than a revival of the Catalan midday vermouth ritual and the salty-vinegary aperitif repertoire that goes with it.   

And now? Well, it’s as if Barcelona has Magi-mixed all these historic tendencies into a richly delicious emulsion. Places that were once super-hip have become neighborhood standbys, while been-there-forever, dyed-in-the-wool haunts have returned to the forefront of fashion. 

Today’s trends seem destined to seep more permanently into the city’s gastro DNA. Down to the bread and beer, there’s a mainstream embrace of seasonality, craft, plant-based eating, and high-quality ingredients—values that are front and center at a new crop of intimate, bistro-esque restaurants that cropped up during the pandemic. Often situated in less-touristed parts of town, helmed by a sole (often young) chef, and with a handful of tables, these cozy neighborhood joints are notable for being oriented more toward the euro than the tourist dollar. The impulse to be small-scale, hands-on, flexible, and free is surely a sign of the times. But if Barcelona has one thing clear right now, it’s the importance of Big Flavor over every other consideration. And for the food-fixated traveler, that’s a serious advantage.  

Ultramarinos Marín

Calle Balmes, 187 
+34 932 176 552

Is it a bar? Is it an asador (grill)? Behind a 1970s shopfront lies this unclassifiable eatery that’s been all the rage since it opened its doors mid-pandemic. Chefs Borja García and Adrià Cartró specialize in seasonal produce with maximum TLC, and seating arrangements follow the typical Spanish gastro-bar model: best to sit up at the bar to watch the frenzied goings-on in the tiny kitchen. Start with an appetizer of crisp pork chicharrones and home-pickled baby onions, then follow that with mackerel escabeche, char-roast vegetable escalivada, a handful of langoustines still sizzling from the teppanyaki, thinly sliced smoked beef tongue … García and Cartró have no truck with garnishing, saucing, or otherwise gussying up these good and simple things: What you see is, essentially, what you get. Either way, pretty much everything is sensational here—including the fun, boisterous vibe. 

Maleducat

Carrer Mansó, 54
+34 936 046 753

In which chef Victor Ródenas, Barcelona born and bred, draws on the fabulous produce at Mercat de Sant Antoni for a short daily menu that fizzes with imagination. Consider, for instance, a lunch of ajoblanco with tomato slush and fresh tuna, rigatoni stuffed with royale of hare, and slow-roast lamb with Idiazabal cheese and tarragon cream. Thanks to Maleducat (whose name means “Badly Raised”) and a handful of other rebellious chef-powered bistrots, the salt-of-the-earth neighborhood of Sant Antoni at the western end of the Eixample has seen its gastro credentials soar. If this casa de menjars (eating house) has a deliberately plain and workmanlike look about it, the food is anything but basic. 

Estimar

Carrer Sant Antoni dels Sombrerers, 3
+34 932 689 197

If there’s one thing Rafa Zafra understands better than most of his chef contemporaries, it’s that sourcing the very best seafood—say, anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea or big fat shrimps from Roses—is more important than fussy preparations. I like the way Zafra cooks clams, for instance, sautéing them with nothing more fancy than a splash of fino sherry. His chipirones (baby squid), another highlight, are crisp-fried in EVOO, Andalusian-style, and arrive with a side of squid-ink mayonnaise. Desserts, too, have a simple elegance: Zafra starts his flan in the steamer, then rests in a bain-marie for a sublimely silky rendition of this Spanish classic. “Estimar” is Catalan for “to love.” And I do. 

Disfrutar

Carrer Villarroel, 163
+34 933 486 896

Whatever you think of the global hit parade that last year proclaimed Disfrutar the best in Europe and second best in the whole wide world, you’re sure to be awestruck by the terrifically avant-garde $315 tasting menu. Chefs Eduard Xatruch, Oriol Castro, and Mateu Casañas were all cohorts of Ferran Adriá back in the day, and to judge by their cooking at Disfrutar (the name means “Enjoy”), the experience has stuck with them. There’s Bulli-esque wizardry in such creations as the “onion soup” reinvented as a puff of onion “bread” with Comté cheese, coconut squid “meatballs” with a soupçon of curry, and “black apple” cooked for two months at 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The pair of baby cuttlefish surrounded with fresh-pea “spherifications” floats my particular boat with its loving evocation of the Catalan terroir. Unlike at Adriá’s old place, however, at Disfrutar even the pyrotechnics have a nonchalance about them, as if these new-gen chefs had outgrown the desperate need to wow the diner. On a recent visit, for instance, I was invited to reach into a box for one course, which turned out to be a large, succulent red prawn from the port of Vilanova ready to be slurped and savored. Enjoyed, indeed.

Sartoria Panatieri

Carrer de l’Encarnació, 51
+34 931 376 385

Impressively sited in a cavernous white post-industrial space, Sartoria Panatieri has quickly established itself among Barcelona’s leading pizzerie and was even voted number one in Europe in a recent “50 Best” ranking. Pizzaioli Rafa Panatieri and Jorge Sastre use organic, kilometer-zero ingredients and cure their own guanciale and salchichón from rare-breed Gascón pork. Their Roman-style crust, blasted until crisp at the edges in a woodfired oven, is textbook, while the toppings skew more new-gen Spanish: sobrassada and Mahón cheese, wild fennel and honey, and escabeche carrot with goat ricotta, to name a few.

Teresa Carles

Carrer Jovellanos, 2
+34 933 171 829

Plant-based dining still feels somewhat novel in meat-loving Spain. But in Teresa Carles, open since 1979, Barcelona has one of the country’s true pioneers of the genre. Inspired by the Catalan flavors she grew up with, Carles sources fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms from her home village of Algerri (Lleida) and combines them with plant-based “fish” and “meat” to make dishes like hearty vegan escudella and an invigoratingly spiced Malaysian vegetable curry. The stone-fronted locale (also with a takeout section) is an airy, high-ceilinged space with bare brick walls and monochrome floor tiles.  There’s nothing purse-lipped or pious about the vibe—a sign that in Barcelona, just maybe, vegetarian eating is finally coming of age.

Le Grand Café Rouge

Rambla de Prim, 6
+34 932 780 423

It’s easy to forget how close Barcelona is to France, geographically and culinarily—until you meet Romain Fornell, a Toulouse-born chef intent on spreading the gospel of la véritable cuisine française. I first sampled Fornell’s food back in the day at his posh, Ducasse-influenced hotel restaurant Diana, but the “Big Red Café” is far breezier. Sunlight off the Mediterranean floods into the high-ceilinged, white-walled interior, sited at the very end of the Avinguda Diagonal where it meets the sea at the Forum. The menu reads like a brasserie highlight reel: There’s pâté en croûte, onion soup made with Figueres onions and Comté cheese, and bouillabaisse with a puff-pastry crust.  As if wagging his finger at Barcelona’s legion of flaccid tartes Tatins, Fornell’s is impeccably caramelized and crisp. 

Bar Pinotxo 

Mercat de Sant Antoni 18–21, Carrer del Compte d’Urgell, 1
+34 933 171 731

In its first life, Pinotxo (founded 1952) was a tiny bar near the entrance of La Boqueria market where shoppers stopped for a restorative drink and a tapa before schlepping their purchases home. With genial Juanito Bayén and his signature bowtie at the helm, Pinotxo became a pilgrimage site for rustic dishes like beef and potato fricandó, chickpea stew with blood sausage botifarra, and griddled shellfish, always made with market ingredients. So when Juanito passed away last year at 88, it was unclear whether his legacy would live on—until we learned that Pinotxo was reopening in the less touristy, newly restored Mercat de Sant Antoni. Juanito’s nephew Jordi, together with his wife Maria José and son Didac, are now at the helm, and they’ve sensibly changed nothing about the cooking. Perch on a barstool, get yourself a caña (half-pint) of beer or a glass of cava, and let them tell you what’s good today.

Paradiso

Carrer Riera Palau, 4
+34 933 607 211

Barcelona’s cocktail scene has something for every kind of fancy sipper, from the hardcore old-school (Dry Bar, Boadas) to the funky and eclectic (Florería Atlántica, Two Schmucks). But when it comes to contemporary cocktailery, Paradiso, the brainchild of Italian bar supremo Giacomo Giannotti, is hot to trot. From outside, Paradiso looks like a humble sandwich bar (side note: the home-cured pastrami might be the best outside Manhattan), but on most nights, there’s a line around the block. Climb through the door of an old-fashioned fridge, and you’ll soon see why. On a cocktail menu loftily titled “The History of Humanity,” you’ll spot ingredients like rose water, olive oil, saffron, sesame, and seaweed—resulting in high-concept mixology that’s breathtaking when it works, tiresome when it (occasionally) doesn’t. Smoke, mirrors, and VR headsets are all par for the course. Me? I’d like another slurp of the Fleming 1928, a hauntingly delicious concoction of tequila, Mancino vermouth, miso, beer syrup, coconut, grapefruit, and lemongrass.      

La Mundana de Sants

Carrer Vallespir, 93
+34 934 088 023

Tucked behind Barcelona’s central rail station, La Mundana has managed to stay under the tourist radar. It’s the kind of place where neighbors pitch up on a weekend lunchtime for vermouth on the rocks, a ham croqueta or two, and a half-dozen oysters. For the rest of us, it’s a Barcelona gastro-bar, among the best of the variety, where Alain Guiard (ex Sant Pau, F12 Terrassen in Stockholm) and Marc Martín whip up original fusion dishes like pig’s-feet rice with bone marrow and a picada of tarragon and pistachios, and roast cauliflower with fried curry leaves and Café de Paris sauce. (Book well in advance.)

Can Cisa/Bar Brutal

Carrer de la Princesa, 14 and Carrer Barra de Ferro, 1
+34 933 199 881 and +34 932 954 797

Can Cisa/Bar Brutal is the restaurant-bar where Spain’s natural wine revolution began back in 2013, when two vino-obsessed twins stumbled on a dilapidated old space near the Picasso Museum with a “For Rent” sign on the door. The twins in question, Max and Stefano Colombo, from Venice, Italy, had been packing them in at their fine Barcelona restaurant Xemei for nigh-on two decades. But with a little help from their friends, the Colombos created what was then a novelty for the city, offering hundreds of organic, natural and biodynamic wines, many served by the glass (look out for Catalan grape varieties such as xarel·lo and white garnatxa) along with Italian-inflected bar bites like porchetta sandwich, ox tartare with Cipriani sauce, and burrata with trout roe. The convivial atmosphere—not to mention the raffish charm of the interior with its formica tables and antique wooden chairs—makes for a great night out. 

Trópico

Carrer Balmes, 24
+34 938 348 624

Barcelona has taken to the imported concept of brunch like a duck to water, finding it compatible with the lazing, grazing routines of the Spanish weekend. Venues in the city peddling avocado toast and eggs Benedict are two-a-penny these days, but few brunch spots go above and beyond as excitingly as Trópico. Brazilian chef Rodrigo Marco takes the globe-trotting schtick of his original Trópico in the Raval—in a nutshell, foods and drinks from between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—and runs with it at this new place in the uptown Eixample. Playing out against the natural textures of the light-filled locale is a culinary fiesta that brims with the colors and flavors of the global South, zig-zagging from açaí and ají de gallina to Venezuelan cachapas stuffed with pabellón criollo and patacones with salsa hogao, cilantro, and costeño cheese. Marco’s coxinha, a deep-fried potato croquette stuffed with cheese and chicken, is a loving recreation of a Brazilian barroom staple (not to mention a surefire hangover remedy), while his fish moqueca, fragrant with coconut milk and dendê oil, may be the finest version of this Bahian classic anywhere in Spain. 

The post The Hottest Restaurants and Bars to Try in Barcelona Right Now appeared first on Saveur.

Easter is celebrated on a different day each year, but I always know it’s around the corner when the shelves of my neighborhood pastelería fill with glistening trays of torrijas (to-REE-has), their unmistakable scent of lemon peel, cinnamon, and eggy batter wafting onto the sidewalk like an olfactory siren song. When I bite into my first torrija of the season—its cinnamon-sugar stuck to my lips, its cool custard gliding down my throat—spring has finally sprung in my psyche.

Torrijas are Spain’s version of French toast, but to me, they’re far more luxurious than the diner staple. To make them, you soak day-old baguette slices in milk steeped with sunny Mediterranean aromatics—cinnamon sticks, cloves, honey, citrus zest, what have you—then dip them in beaten egg and deep-fry them in abundant olive oil. When they slump and hiss, you know their crumb has turned to custard, and they’re ready to be rolled in cinnamon-sugar and plopped on a plate. Y ya está—the dish is such a cinch that it’s one of the few holiday desserts Spaniards still whip up at home (as opposed to, say, Christmas turrón and Three Kings Day roscón de reyes, which are usually snapped up at the shop).

Spain’s love for torrijas runs deep—Ancient Rome deep. A recipe from the 1st-century cookbook Apicius reads strikingly similar to 21st-century ones for torrijas: “Break fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces, soak in milk, fry in oil, cover with honey, and serve.” Iberia’s Sephardic Jews, legendary fryers of all things sweet and savory, also made torrijas and called them revanadas de parida (“slices for giving birth”). They were prepared for new mothers, not only for their restorative sugar and fat content but also because, according to María Paz Moreno, author of Madrid: A Culinary History, “it was believed that, since the [revanadas] were soaked in milk, they would increase milk production to nurse the newborn.”

What, then, does a slice of fried bread have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? In the weeks of Lenten fasting leading up to Easter, the torrija likely stood in as a nourishing, calorie-packed alternative to meat, which was forbidden. Whatever their origin—Roman, Sephardic, early Christian, or otherwise—torrijas are no doubt one of Spain’s most ancient dishes.

Get the recipe for Torrijas (Spanish French Toast)»

They’ve been around for so long that, unlike paella valenciana or fabada asturiana, there’s no set formula for making them. They’re enjoyed hot or cold, covered in syrup or cinnamon-sugar—or both, or neither. Honestly, I’ve never met a torrija I didn’t like: It’s hard to screw up fried bread. But I do have a sweet spot for torrijas soaked in sweet wine (torrijas de vino), which were the standard in central and southern Spain until refrigeration brought fresh milk to the masses. They’re like mulled wine in solid form.

These days, torrijas are trendy across Spain, often the most-ordered dessert at glitzy tapas bars and Michelin-starred gastro-temples. High-end chefs love to tinker with them, sometimes to the point of unrecognizability. In the Basque Country, Mugaritz serves a caramelized brioche torrija with almond-rum cream, while in Asturias, Casa Gerardo nixes the customary dunk in beaten egg and makes up for lost calories with a quenelle of rice pudding ice cream.

But the most memorable new-age torrija that I’ve tasted comes from the ovens of Panem in Madrid, an artisan bread bakery run by five pastry-obsessed siblings. Their torrija, a gleaming gold ingot of custard-soaked brioche, has a light, flan-like jiggliness and a crunchy exoskeleton of torched sugar. “We make a classic crème brûlée custard, soak our homemade brioche in it, then bake it off in slices,” Antonio García, one of the owners, told me last week as he stuffed hot baguettes into paper sleeves during the mid-morning rush. “The key is to leave the brioche in the liquid for a full 24 hours to achieve the right texture.”

As I was leaving Panem with a box of torrijas under my arm, a silver-haired señora holding hands with her grandson called out to García. “Are there torrijas yet?” she asked over the din of the morning rush. “Sure are,” he replied. The boy looked up at his grandmother with utter delight, and shouted, “¡Qué bien!”

The post Torrijas Are Spanish ‘French’ Toast—With a Few Tantalizing Twists appeared first on Saveur.

Reach into a cookie jar in Spain, and you might pull out a powdery almond polvorón; an orange-scented mantecado; a sticky marzipan figurine; or a deep-fried casadiella stuffed with thick, boozy walnut paste. There’s a whole world of cookies out there waiting to be nibbled on in Spain—and baked at home—yet most Americans couldn’t name a single one.

Maybe that’s because traditional Spanish cookies are “adult”: They aren’t gooey in the middle or particularly sweet and are far too monotone for Instagram’s algorithm. To the American palate, they can be perplexing, since many verge on savory with ingredients like lard, aniseed, olive oil, and aguardiente (80-proof brandy; literally, “firewater”). Sprinkles? Pink icing? Chocolate chips? Venga ya, hombre. Cookies in Spain are straightforward and frippery-free, more at home on the coffee cup saucer—or charcuterie board—than on the dessert plate. Think of them as snacking cake in cookie form—they come together quickly, rely on cheap pantry ingredients, and dress up as well as they dress down. I always marvel at the variety of textures, which vary from crunchy to cakey to flaky, and at the generous quantities of citrus and ground nuts that find their way into the dough. And because there’s rarely any dairy involved (Spain’s baking fats of choice are lard and olive oil), you can serve them fresh or keep them for weeks and nobody will be the wiser.

The Moors, who called the shots on the Iberian Peninsula for seven centuries, are to thank for many desserts popular in Spain today—just look at the Arabic-root names of sweets like alfajor, alajú, and mazapán. Honey had been the primary sweetening agent in Iberia since time immemorial, but around the 10th century, the Moors brought sugarcane to Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), planting sprawling groves in the south and east. This was a game-changer: The crop was a boon not only to the economy but to medieval Spain’s culinary canon. As María José Sevilla writes in Delicioso: A History of Food in Spain, in Al-Andalus “there were recipes made with an array of ingredients such as butter, rose water, yeast, milk, cheese, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, and honey,” adding that “cooks could select from lavender, cloves, cinnamon, saffron, or pepper, among others.”

After the Reconquista, which brought the Catholic Monarchs to power and expelled thousands of Moors and Jews, Spain’s Arab-influenced pastry tradition was inherited and preserved by nuns, who often depended on selling their wares for income. Even today, some of the finest pasteles (pastries), tortas (flatbreads), and other sundry dulces (sweets) can be found in convents, wrapped in wax paper and sold by the kilo to locals and tourists alike.

Of course, these days you can track down all sorts of cookies in Spain, from Scottish shortbread to American chocolate-chip, but Spaniards still have a sweet spot for the classics, which vary by region and are often associated with holidays like Holy Week or Christmas. Many follow centuries-old formulas that bypass white sugar and chemical leaveners altogether.

My favorite is the ultra-flaky mantecado, Moorish with its abundant orange zest yet hardcore Christian-Spanish with its ibérico lard and white wine—in sum, the history of Iberian pastry in a sugar-dusted bite. It’s one of countless Spanish cookies that deserve worldwide renown, but lest we bite off more than we can chew, here are eight that stand out for both flavor and cultural importance.

Mantecados

Get the recipe for Mantecados »

Mantecados are an edible elevator pitch for baking with lard: They’re feather-light yet beguilingly rich and shatter into a thousand sugary shards. Those from Castile-La Mancha, “mantecados manchegos,” are the flakiest of the bunch. They get their lift from dry airén wine and fresh-squeezed orange juice, whose vapors raise the laminated dough into delicate layers. In Andalusia, mantecados are denser and more powdery, and often contain cinnamon and sesame seeds. The polvorón, a shortbread eaten around Christmas made with ground marcona almonds and coated in confectioner’s sugar, is a close relative.

Mazapán

There’s little more to mazapán (marzipan) than almonds, sugar, and eggs, but how those ingredients are mixed—and coaxed into dainty decorative shapes, often for Christmas festivities—makes the Spanish rendition stand out. The medieval city of Toledo may be mazapán’s birthplace: It was here, in 1212, that nuns at San Clemente Convent are said to have nourished fatigued soldiers with a mixture of pounded almonds and sugar in the absence of bread, which was scarce at the time. San Clemente’s nuns continue to make marzipan according to a secret ancient recipe that calls for Valencian almonds, lemon zest, and a touch of cinnamon.

Suspiros de Moya

The Canary Islands punch above their weight when it comes to Spanish sweets, which makes sense, since for centuries the archipelago was a sugar-production hub as well as a key pitstop on Transatlantic trade routes. Suspiros de Moya are one of the Canaries’ most notable confections: double-baked meringues from the verdant inland town of Moya on Gran Canaria that dissolve on your tongue like cotton candy. They’re often piped into pointy stars and flavored with lemon peel.

Panellets

These spongy almond cookies, striking for their pine nut-studded exteriors, are gobbled up by the dozen in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands on All Saints’ Day, November 1st. To make them, cooks knead together a simple dough of almond flour, lemon zest, and eggs, then roll each cookie in pine nuts before baking. Panellets have been around since at least the 18th century, when locals would prepare them as graveside offerings and take them to the church to be blessed.

Yemas

Few visitors to the Castilian city of Ávila leave without trying its famous yemas de Santa Teresa, dandelion-yellow orbs dusted with powdered sugar and nestled in crinkly paper wrappers. The confections resemble their main ingredient, egg yolks, which are beaten with lemony sugar syrup over low heat until thick and velvety before being rolled into gumball-size spheres. Today they’re popular across Spain, and many families mail-order boxes of them as a special treat.

Rosquillas de anís

Rosquillas, fried doughnut-shaped cookies, are a Holy Week treat throughout the country. They get their richness from eggs and olive oil and their intoxicating aroma from cinnamon, lemon zest, and anise liqueur. Fresh from the fryer, they’re soft and cakey; left out for a few hours, they turn dry and crumbly, perfect for dunking into an afternoon café cortado.

Turrón

The star of the Christmas dessert spread in Spain is turrón, a nougat whose most traditional version contains almonds, honey, and egg whites. Good turrón may be the best nut brittle you’ve ever had—crunchy, sweet, and faintly floral, a holdover from the almond-scented kitchens of Al-Andalus that hasn’t gone out of style since at least the 11th century. The soft version native to Jijona is worth seeking out; it crumbles like halva and is blended in a special (and, uh, vaguely sexual) mixer called a boixet.

Casadielles

Some of Spain’s most mouthwatering desserts hail from the mountainous northern region of Asturias—it’s easy to overdo it on chocolate-dipped moscovitas or carbayones oozing almondy pastry cream—but its most storied pastry is perhaps the casadiella, thought to be of Roman origin. A carnival snack, it’s essentially a dessert empanada: crimped fried dough stuffed with a heavenly sludge of ground walnuts, eggs, sugar, and anise liqueur.

The post A Field Guide to Spain’s Great Cookies appeared first on Saveur.

This story is part of our 25th Anniversary extravaganza, a celebration of the magazine’s first quarter century.

Restaurants are living things and, sadly, like all living things, they eventually come to an end. Here are 14 we covered at various points, all now gone, all sorely missed.

72 Market Street

Venice, California (1983–2000)

This monument to seaside culture and comfort food—oh, the meatloaf!—was owned by actor/producer/director Tony Bill and actor/musician Dudley Moore, who sometimes played piano here.

Aux Amis du Beaujolais

Paris (1921–2009)

French and American journalists flocked to this quintessential bistro du quartier, or neighborhood joint, serving unpretentious food and honest wine to generations of locals.

Chasen’s

West Hollywood (1936–1995)

The ultimate Hollywood hangout, Chasen’s appealed to everyone (W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan) with such midcentury American specialties as shrimp cocktail, lobster ­Newburg, and strawberry shortcake.

El Bulli

Roses, Spain (1961–2011)

Arguably the most influential chef of the millenium, Ferran Adrià reinvented what food could be, drawing pilgrims up a ­treacherous road to a middle-of-nowhere location on the Catalan coast. (In 2020, El Bulli will be reborn as a creative foundation.)

Four Seasons

New York City (1959–2016; 2018–2019)

It was the first luxury restaurant in the country to feature American cuisine, courtesy of a menu curated by James Beard. The space—designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, with art by Picasso and Miró—attracted political, financial, and media barons, giving rise to the “power lunch” before closing in 2016. The Four Seasons reopened nearby two years later, but the luster had faded, and it quickly closed again.

Hibiscus

London (2000–2016)

French chef Claude Bosi’s groundbreaking modernist restaurant—in its time, arguably the most exciting place to eat in London—earned two Michelin stars. Bosi is now the chef at the city’s much-lauded Bibendum.

Ports

West Hollywood (1972–1992)

You might have seen anyone from Warren Beatty to Claes Oldenburg to Eve Babitz scarfing down a range of international fare (eggplant parmigiana, albóndigas in chipotle) at this quirky, clubby boite.

El Racó de Can Fabes

Sant Celoni, Spain (1981–2013)

Chef Santi Santamaria—considered the anti-Ferran Adrià for his refusal to use scientific trickery—made this the first restaurant in Catalonia, and the second in all of Spain, to receive three Michelin stars.

Rose Pistola

San Francisco (1996–2017)

This place was inspired by, and named for, the key figure in Peggy Knickerbocker’s beloved feature, “The ‘Old Stoves’ of North Beach,” which ran in Saveur’s second issue.

Savoy

New York City (1990–2011)

Peter Hoffman’s eclectic American bistro in SoHo did the farm-to-table thing long before the rest of the world caught on.

Trader Vic’s

Beverly Hills (1955–2007)

This kitschy pseudo-South Seas fantasy also happened to serve some of the best food in Los Angeles during the 1960s and ’70s.

Uglesich’s

New Orleans (1924–2005)

There was almost always a long line of folks outside Uglesich’s, clamoring for classic New Orleans fare like po’boys, Gulf oysters and crawfish étouffée.

Valentino

Santa Monica (1972–2018)

Valentino brought real Italian cooking to Los Angeles and was, for 40-plus years, perhaps the finest Italian restaurant in the nation, with one of the biggest wine lists.

Windows on the World

New York City (1973–2001)

Sadly, the whole world witnessed Windows on the World’s demise. On September 11, 2001, this dazzlingly ambitious, iconic restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of Tower One of the World Trade Center lost 73 members of its incredibly diverse staff. In 2006, some surviving employees started a new restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side. Named Colors, it operated until 2017, then reopened this past October.

The post Closing Time: 14 Restaurants That We Sorely Miss appeared first on Saveur.

Following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Spain experienced a cultural as well as culinary revolution. The country was released from its shackles, and octopus, sardines, tuna pies, and other regional dishes and ingredients hitched a ride on the wave of country-wide migration. Destination: Madrid.

The 1970s and ‘80s saw the biggest movement of workers in Spain’s history. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all corners of the country packed their bags, left their families behind, and bought one-way tickets to the capital—and with them, brought their culture, hard-work ethic, and family recipes. When their train pulled into Atocha station, most were swept up by the winds of the construction boom, some went into hospitality, opening up hundreds of small, no-frills bars that served their new neighbors a taste of another home.

Half a century later, both modernity and nostalgia have caught up with these humble watering holes. The tides are shifting, and in an attempt to keep up with the times, their regional roots are growing harder to detect. But learn how to decode their menus and eccentric décor, and the story of those boom years will unravel before your eyes.

Here are six no-frills bars that once washed up on the cobbled shores of Madrid, and whose doors are still portals to all of Spain’s culinary nooks and crannies.

Cervecería Río Sol – León

Cervecería Río Sol is one of those places you walk past on your way to your well-researched dinner reservation and think, “That place looks cute—next time,” and there’s never a next time. In the middle of an area teeming with tourists and nightlife revelers, Fernando Lario’s little bar is an overlooked gem that quite happily lets the passer-by pass by.

The silent and seemingly stern owner stands in the doorway with both arms behind his back—a stance broken only when he spots someone he knows. He yells their name, shakes hands, maybe even hugs, and then returns back to the doorway, resuming his slightly intimidating guise toward the uninitiated. Only once you’ve decoded this secret filter used by every no-frills bar owner in Madrid are you ready to enter and be received as warmly as the locals.

Step into Río Sol or take a seat on the terrace overlooking the marvelous nearby Basilica. Order the tortilla española, made by Lario’s wife but, be warned: it contains a few controversial ingredients. Most Madrileños are embroiled an eye-watering dispute about whether or not a tortilla should contain onion, and, at times, it can be as dividing as teabag-in or teabag-out. But throw in chorizo or green peppers and it’s fine! How? Because that’s what they do in León, and all of Spain respects that (unless Jamie Oliver does it).

Bar Sidrería Aviseo – Asturias

Antonio García Pérez is an hour late opening his bar. “Come back in 20 minutes, I’ll be open then!” He shouts to me through the window. Bar Aviseo is worth going for a stroll around the block for, but give him more than 20 minutes—it is Spain, afterall, and the stereotype dies hard in the no-frills end of the hospitality industry.

I return, not at all to Pérez’s surprise, and he tells me that the octopus is very good today, pointing at his millennial son tucking into a media ración of it further along the bar—and he’s right.

Served sliced on a wooden plate, the pulpo is doused in olive oil and sprinkled liberally with pimentón and sea salt. Be sure to scoop up a good amount of the pimentón-infused oil with each bite of the octopus, and use the bread to mop up the rest.

Hanging on the wall of Bar Aviseo, you might spot a photo of the tiny Asturian village of Cangas de Narceo, where Pérez is from. “We were just seven families,” he begins, and then points to a photo of a man down a mine shaft. “My brothers were miners. If I’d stayed, I probably would have been a miner. But I left for Madrid and opened my bar. I don’t really know why I came, I just did, like everyone else was doing at the time.”

Bar Santurce – The Coast

Despite the Mediterranean Sea being about 300 miles away, sardines have become a Madrid classic, according to Raúl Lázaro, owner of Bar Santurce, and a man of few words.

Raúl was born the same year that Franco died and, just two years later, his father Felix Lázaro would open Bar Santurce in the regional fusion style of the time. The bar is named after a town in the Basque country, the seafood served was caught off the Mediterranean shores of Castellón, and, of course, the bar in the heart of Madrid’s most Castizo neighbourhood, La Latina.

Forty-two years later, Bar Santurce has stood the test of time, and it wears its wear and tear as badges of honor. The aluminium bar, the well-trodden terrazzo tiles, and the fish-scented walls and furnishings have seen everything but the Mediterranean Sea.

A dozen orders of sardines hiss on the grill, projecting fish-scale ballistics around the room. Cutlery isn’t done here so roll up your sleeves and grasp a sardine firmly in both hands. Chomp through the salt-studded skin into the salty-sweet meat like no one ’s watching. Bones are optional, as is squeeze of lemon but, fine, go for it – you are now, of course, on the Mediterranean coast.

Bar a Miña Gaita – Galicia

By now, you’ve mastered the steely bar owner filter and are brave enough to walk straight in. Play this game with María del Carmen Rocha’s husband and he shall step aside for you, welcoming you into his shrine to Galicia, the region from which he and his wife came.

The Gallego couple arrived in Madrid separately in the 1980s, waiting bars for their earlier working years. In 2003, they opened up Bar A Miña Gaita together.

“We can’t compete with the franchises that are opening up everywhere around us,” says Rocha. “They offer fast food at cheap prices. People don’t seem to care about quality anymore”, and her concern is justified. Madrid real estate prices have skyrocketed in recent years due to gentrification and speculation. Bar A Miña Gaita is situated on a quiet backstreet, just around the corner from the city’s thronging Gran Vía artery. It is a prime location, but the narrow, winding streets off Gran Vía don’t receive as much footfall as you might expect. You’ve got to know about this place to go here, and if you do, you’ll be rewarded with a charmingly ramshackle glimpse of Galicia.

Mesón Valle del Jerte – Extremadura

“¿Que os pongo, chicos?” (What can I get you, guys?) asks the woman behind the bar, in a thick Extremaduran accent. The region from which she hails sits west of Madrid, sandwiched between Toledo and Portugal. You may know Extremadura for its famed seasonal spectacle, when vast groves of cherry trees in the Valle de Jerte—the bar’s namesake—blossom all at once.

The menu at Mesón Valle del Jerte is almost indistinguishable from any other in Madrid, except for a few regional touches. Picadillo Extremeño, for example, looks just like any chopped salad in Madrid, but the Extremaduran version is more finely diced; a more notable standout is the bar’s Licor de Cereza, a sweet liqueur flavored with cherries from the Valle del Jerte.

Valle del Jerte is just across the road from El Rastro, the bustling 400-year-old flea market yet, remarkably, few market goers decide to cross over; the pleasant terrace at Valle del Jerte remains quiet, hidden in plain sight.

Bar Los Caracoles – Madrid

The migration boom may have brought many Spaniards to the capital, but plenty of Madrid residents were, of course, already there. Bar Los Caracoles is a local institution, whose landlocked food is popular with the locals and, despite having no connection to the sea, there’s a curious tidal rhythm to the place.

The ebbs and flows of Madrid’s no-frills bars are a phenomenon that takes years to master. Beyond breakfast, elevenses, lunch, and dinner, there’s also the hour of vermouth, the café con leche y churros slot, and the quick shot of hard liquor before the commute home. But the most subtle phenomenon of the Madrid bar is one carried by the city’s eldest generation: snail rush hour.

Between 8 and 9 PM, just before the enduring Spanish sun bids adiós for another day, abuelas and abuelos head to their nearest snail bar for a media ración de caracoles. This isn’t a fine-dining, sit-down experience, but rather a stand-up-at-the-bar gastronomic ritual upheld by solo, most often elderly punters. This deeply Castizo dish is a staple for a disappearing older generation. The chewy, highly nutritious morsels have a mussel-like texture and they taste of the chorizo they’re cooked alongside.

The post Dive-Bar Food Is Madrid’s Best-Kept Secret appeared first on Saveur.

Be honest: When was the last time you made something Basque for dinner? Unlike Europe’s most celebrated regional cuisines—like Tuscan, Bavarian, or Provençal—Basque food remains woefully unfamiliar to most Americans. Sure, you probably know your pintxos from your tapas and your sagardoa from your txakoli, but with all the breathless coverage of the region’s Michelin-starred meccas and buzzy pintxo scene, you’d be forgiven if you thought Basque cooking was simply too fussy for everyday cooking.

We turned that assumption on its head in this month’s installment of the SAVEUR Cookbook Club, which centered on Marti Buckley’s Basque Country: A Culinary Journey Through a Food Lover’s Paradise—a refreshing paean to how Basques really eat as opposed to how the region’s top toques cook. There were no Arzak-approved foams or spherified garnishes to speak of on the club’s busy Facebook page—just an endless photo stream of ruddy fish stews, zaftig Spanish omelets, and rustic, hand-crimped tarts.

In fact, the more recipes we (and our ~4k members) cooked from Buckley’s book, the more we wondered if we’d ever tasted real Basque food at all—and the more our previous convictions about Basque food unravelled. Here are our top seven takeaways.

Basque cuisine isn’t uniform or easy to define

We knew there was more to Basque cuisine than pintxo bars and Michelin stars, but we were frankly gobsmacked by the diversity of hyperlocal culinary traditions in a region barely bigger than Delaware. On the French side of the border, ten tiny villages produce all of the world’s piment d’Espelette, the earthy, smoky chile that chefs can’t get enough of lately. Gernika may have been immortalized by Picasso, but it’s the town’s namesake green peppers—like shishitos but fleshier and sweeter—that are constantly on our mind (and in our bellies). From Buckley’s in-depth essays and dispatches which pepper the cookbook, we also learned that seemingly every mountain valley has its own recipe canon when it comes to sausages, cheeses, and sauces. In other words, we’re done using the usual tropes—”seafood-heavy,” “minimalist,” “molecular,” “pintxo-driven,” etc.—to describe a cuisine that’s far more complex than meets the eye.

Pintxos don’t have to be elaborate

“The cheffier, the better” used to sum up the Basque Country’s pintxo philosophy. A decade ago, dry ice, centrifuged sauces, and neon-green foams were par for the course on a pintxo crawl through San Sebastian’s Parte Vieja; today, the Basque Country’s one-bite wonders are less about shock value and more about simplicity and restraint. That shift comes through in Buckley’s “Pintxos” chapter, which spotlights 11 dishes that (for the most part) come together in minutes such as cider-braised chorizo, garlic potatoes, and stuffed piquillo peppers.

Specialty ingredients are easier to find than you may think

We’ve all been there—peering down at a recipe wondering where the hell you’re going to find that oddball ingredient. When it comes to cooking from Basque Country, fear not: the “Resources” page is a veritable treasure trove. Instead of listing a handful of websites and stores like most cookbooks do, the buyer’s guide is ordered by ingredient, so you know exactly where to source, say, the best Spanish-style chorizo, Tolosa beans, or Idiazabal cheese.

Cheesecake doesn’t need a crust

As a once-upon-a-time New Yorker, I physically shouted at the recipe for gazta tarta (cheesecake) in the “Sweets” chapter. What sort of psychopath, I wondered, would make a cheesecake without a crust? One bite of this rich, oozy show-stopper, though, and I was an instant convert. Hovering somewhere between a pudding and a cake, the dessert stands out for its caramelized, mahogany-brown surface that’s as nutty and rich as the crisped bottom of a fondue pot.

Basque comfort food is where it’s at

Our favorite recipes were those that warmed both our bodies and spirits—ones we could imagine hunkering down with during a spell of Basque (read: relentlessly rainy) weather. Porrusalda, a potato-and-leek potage that requires six ingredients, fit that bill nicely. So did ajoarriero, a garlicky salt cod stew so thick with day-old baguette you can stand a spoon up in it. And squid in ink sauce, a black-as-night braise of stuffed calamari that will fill your home with aromas of cooking wine and the open Atlantic.

Simple doesn’t mean easy

One of the most striking features of Basque Country is its diminutive ingredient lists, but make no mistake—a number of its recipes are elaborate weekend projects requiring practice and exacting technique. That’s the case for odolkia, a Gipuzkoa-style sausage that calls for pasteurized pig’s blood, a sausage stuffing machine, and the patience of Teresa de Jesús (ripped hog casings, air bubbles, and clogged gears are all part of the fun). Hake with clams in salsa verde, a mainstay across the region, will only emulsify properly if you use a fumet made with gelatinous fish parts and are careful not to over- or undercook the sauce (as a couple of Cookbook Club members learned the hard way). Of course, the book’s mix of challenging foodie projects and dead-easy weeknight recipes is what makes it worth reaching for virtually any time.

Basque meats and cheeses are underrated

When it comes to Spanish cheeses and charcuterie, manchego and jamón ibérico may get all the attention—and mira, we’re not mad about it: More unsung Basque delicacies for us! Under the dairy umbrella, the Basques make irresistible cheeses like Idiazabal, dense with the fatty milk of indigenous latxa sheep, and Roncal, a crumbly ewe’s-milk cheese that’s been made in Basque Navarre since perhaps as early as the 9th century. Meat-wise, chorizo fans will swoon over txistorra, a pimentón-laced sausage that’s more slender and less aggressively garlicky than its Spanish counterparts. And then there are the umami-rich tripe and blood sausages (mondejua and odolkia, respectively), juicy and aromatic with cooked-down leeks and spices.

The post Seven Things Most Americans Get Wrong About Basque Cuisine appeared first on Saveur.

Last summer I found myself on a bit of a Manchego and sherry bender and itching to visit a new city. I’d heard a lot about the evolving food scene in Madrid from a friend, SAVEUR contributor Benjamin Kemper, so when he said he needed a house sitter I was all too happy to show up on his doorstep. Doing so put me within walking distance of a fantastic bakery, more jamòn and marconas than I could consume in a lifetime, and one of the coolest cheese shops on the planet.

In Madrid’s July heat, Quesería Cultivo is a welcome and shady oasis. The perfume peculiar to a well-maintained cheese shop—at once lactic-fresh and cow barn musty—gave me a thrill. The shop’s climate-controlled main room is chilly, slightly humid, and painted a dark charcoal grey; the matte walls provide a dramatic and Instagram-friendly backdrop to the uncluttered selection: bandage-wrapped cheddars, mahogany-smoked Idiazabal, a hulking aged gouda, and sticky, apricot rounds of stinky, washed rind wheels. Stylish and friendly cheesemongers stand by, willing to slice off a sample of any and everything that catches your eye. Basically, Cultivo is a cheese nerd’s dream come true, and until now, their products have been European exclusives.

Quesería Cultivo is not just a great cheese shop. It also has its own affinage program. Affinage—the process of finishing cheese in an actual or simulated cave—requires delicate climate control, monitoring of ambient yeasts and molds, and an obsessive attention to inventory. The storefront’s humidity, low light, and temperature allow young cheeses to finish their aging process gracefully in-house before being handed off, perfectly ripe, to eager customers. The project is the brainchild of three families, all of whom run small and innovative farmstead cheese operations. They joined forces in 2014 and their resulting shop features products from all of their farms, in addition to a handful of carefully selected cheeses, wines, and specialty foods from other small producers. The space has a large open workspace where the owners teach training programs for students interested in professional cheese making and selling, plus tasting workshops for customers.

I tried to bring a hunk of Cultivo’s phenomenal cultured butter back home with me, but forgot it, tragically, in Ben’s fridge. When I did get back to New York, I wouldn’t shut up about the operation to my friend and fellow curd nerd, Adam Moskowitz. The head of renegade cheese import company Columbia Cheese and the organizer of the unbelievably wacky Cheesemonger Invitational, Moskowitz sources and imports outstanding and quirky European farmstead cheeses and provides a ton of support for North America’s cheesemonger community, so he’s a bit of a celebrity in the cheese world.

He also has a knack for navigating the intricacies of import, dairy, and customs laws, so you can imagine my delight when he promptly hopped a flight for Madrid to help Quesería Cultivo coordinate their US debut.

A year later, Columbia is just about ready to put the first wheels of Cultivo cheese out on a truck. 40 Cantagrullas is made on Granja Cantagrullas, a farm owned and operated by Rubén Valbuena and Asela Álvarez, two of the shop owners. It is an adaptation of a traditional English cheddar but it is completely unlike any other cheese I’ve tasted. First of all, it is made from 100% raw sheep’s rather than cow’s milk. The massive 60-pound wheels are, even in their size, outstanding—most sheep’s milk cheeses are traditionally quite small because ewes are less productive milkers than their bovine or caprine counterparts; Granja Cantagrullas only produces one or two of these wheels a day.

Rubèn and Asela start with the milk of Castilian sheep fed on pasture in Ramiro, a small village about an hour’s drive from Madrid. The milk is cultured and curdled using animal rennet, then the curds are are gently heated, stirred and salted by hand, then pressed for 48 hours to extract the whey. Fresh wheels are then unmolded, slathered in a thin layer of butter, and wrapped in strips of linen bandage, final treatments which allow a thin, natural rind to form on the wheels over the course of a 12-month long ripening process.

Start-up cheese operations rarely roll out wheels that require such lengthy aging. Younger cheeses generate an immediate revenue stream and aging such high volume wheels introduces staggering risk, widening both the window of opportunity for something to go wrong and the financial damage if it does. And until recently, the European market, for all its rich cheesemaking heritage, has been resistant to cheeses that veer from the traditional, regional styles. Developing a year-old, 60-pound cheddar out of sheep’s milk in Spain was a hell of a gamble.

Fortunately, production of 40 Cantagrullas has been going better than anyone might have hoped. The farmers, cheesemakers, and affineurs behind it have done their homework and have mastered their craft. 40 Cantagrullas has the sweet-sharp “snackable” bite of a familiar cheddar which almost immediately opens up into the barnyardy funk of traditional farmhouse versions, like Quicke’s from the UK or Jasper Hill’s Cabot Clothbound from Vermont. After the fog of hay, roasted mushrooms, hazelnut, and wet wool lifts, though, a decidedly southern, sheepy heat lingers. Oniony umami and the rich texture found in more delicate Italian pecorinos coats the mouth, leaving me thirsty for a barrel of Amontillado and a 1-way ticket back to Madrid.

Since this cheese takes so long to produce—and since the farm is relatively new—there isn’t a whole lot to go around. Moskowitz will only be able to bring in 15 wheels this year, all made between mid-March through July of last year. This order wiped out Cultivo’s back stock for the season and when it finally hits the market later this month (the wheels just this week came through customs), only a few boutiques will be able to offer it. At this time, only Bi-Right in San Francisco, Pastoral in Chicago, Cheese Bar in Portland, The Cheese Board in Berkeley, and Caputo in Salt Lake City are confirmed recipients—if you’re lucky enough to live near one of those shops, get over there soon to snag a slice. I will be extremely jealous, because while the wheels are making a pit stop in NYC when they get into the US, none of this shipment will be available in the Empire State.

Most of Cultivo’s cheeses are made using raw milk and most are too young to be sold in the US, where regulations mandate pasteurization for any dairy products younger than 60 days. Ruben and Moskowitz hope to eventually bring more of Granja Cantagrullas’s products (including that phenomenal cultured butter) to the US soon. I’ve already started hounding my neighborhood cheese shop to bring them in. For any of those little washed-rind stinkers or liquidy soft-ripened wheels, though, you’ll still need to hop that flight to Madrid.

The post Queseria Cultivo Cheeses are Coming to the US appeared first on Saveur.

Italians have their penchant for pasta, and New Yorkers have a thing for bagels. For Spaniards, one of the cornerstones of their culinary identity is, and always has been, bread.

Historically, regional Spanish panaderías produced rustic loaves in all sizes and shapes, but in the post-Franco era, Spanish breads fell a little flat. Over-reliance on commercial flour and production methods and under-development of fermentation, especially in the cities, led to flavorless loaves that sold their yeasty souls for easy mass-production. The difference in quality between the traditional breads of the Spanish countryside and mass-produced urban loaves became a disparate fact of modern Spanish cuisine.

Fortunately, a revolution is afoot. The toasted smell of darkened loaves baked with masa madre, aka Spanish sourdough, has sent shockwaves from the movement’s epicenter in Madrid out to Barcelona and beyond. With names like pan Gallego, pan de aceite, and pan de tritordeum, this new wave of breads and the Madrid-based bakers producing them are guiding carb-loving Spaniards back to Spain’s artisan baking traditions.

The Maestro of Madrid

A graphic artist by trade, Javier Marca’s personal journey began with fermenting and baking experimental loaves from his home in Madrid, eventually unlocking a passion that has captivated Madrileños—so much so that his loaves generate lines around the block at his aptly-named bakery, Panic, and almost every one of his loaves sells out every day.

Marca doesn’t mince words about his disdain for the Spanish breads of recent years, and his dissertations on the subject are equal parts reflection and retort against Madrid’s history of industrialized baking.

“Once I started baking bread regularly at home, I realized I wasn’t able to find really good bread in any of the hundreds of bakeries around Madrid. They all had the same bread: overly-yeasted, fluffy, tasteless… In Spain, bread is such an important item to have at the table when you start your meal, but we have actually paid no attention to it. It was treated more like a tool than a part of the food. So when I took my first bread out of the oven and had it for dinner, I [felt] really shocked. Knowing nothing at all about fermentation, bacteria or enzymes, just following the steps by mixing and letting rest, I got a bread that had a taste… and then I got those lost flavors from my childhood and the memories about my grandpa cutting along that big, dark loaf with a thick, chewy crust, that I actually used to reject because I was used to the plain, white, thin-crust and pale bread I got at the city.”

Energized by experiments in his home kitchen, Marca’s passion led him to recreate the charred-dark, sour Spanish loaves that only existed in his memories so he traveled to Gloucestershire, England to study under the master bakers at Daylesford Organic Farm. A year later, in 2012, he took a chance in opening a small bakeshop around the corner from his home in Madrid, and the local bread scene hasn’t been the same since.

Nowadays, Panic could be considered the Tartine of Madrid and, much like Chad Robertson, Marca has reintroduced Madrileños to the masa madre of the past. He presides over a sea change in the way Spaniards view bread, and he is turning the tide against the forces of industrialized baking with each new convert.

A Pair of Bakers, a Team of Fighters

Marta Valcuende and Begoña San Pedro call themselves luchadores: ‘fighters’ who own and operate their bakery, La Miguiña, with an eye toward long-fermented loaves like Galician pan de maiz and traditional pastries (like torrijas), cookies, croissants, and sweets.

La Miguiña came about in response to a desperate lack of supply: an inability to find the sorts of breads that San Pedro had learned about in baking school. “We wanted Madrid to have good bread,” she says. “Locals shouldn’t need to travel to the villages in the outskirts of Spain to buy it.”

In addition to baking rustic, handmade sourdough breads and towering bizcocho cakes, La Miguiña is also a leader amongst a network of popular women-led bakeshops, which also includes Horno de Bebette, 180 Obrador, and Amasa. These bakeries not only turn out some of Madrid’s best new-wave breads; they are are also revitalizing long-forgotten culinary traditions and redefining the landscape for bakeries across Madrid.

A Baker and a Scientist

Part workshop, part minimalist display, Panifiesto stands for making products with a real and hyper-local purpose. Owners Ander Gómez (the baker) and Alberto Sanz (the scientist and agroecologist) specialize in edible political statements: breads that intentionally include environmentally-aware ingredients like organic, stone-ground wheat, rye, and tritordeum—a relatively new hybrid cereal crossed between barley and durum wheat, grown in Catalonia, and the base for one of the best loaves in Madrid.

“My idea is to make a simple bread”, says Gomez. “A simple process: flour, water and salt, with nothing else. We use organic ingredients and sourdough, without one gram of industrial yeast in the workshop, of which I am proud. That means that yeast and bacteria that populate our masa madre are indigenous to [the neighborhood of] Lavapies.”

With this new wave of bakeshops guiding Madrileños back to the traditional breads of Spain, one could easily, and happily, spend a month eating through Madrid’s many great new bakeries. Each shop, and each baker, offers something new and exciting to the delicious ongoing conversation. Here are a few of our favorite places to buy our daily bread while visiting Madrid:

The Bakeries

Panic

The bread at Panic—8 basic daily loaves, including a baguette, and a large ciabatta— are alive with the flavors of Javier Marca’s masa madre and a variety of whole wheat flours, grains, seeds, and nuts. Be sure to call ahead and reserve a loaf—they sell out daily—and order the pan con tomate whenever it is available.

3letrasPAN

Much like the hyper-local guerrilla bakers over at at Panifesto, the Valdezarza bakery 3 Letras uses a selection of new and heirloom grains to produce their excellent range of sourdough breads. Look here for pastries as well, especially the magdalenas—a sort of Spanish tea cake—and anything with the ingredient azahar (orange blossom water).

Panifiesto

This Lavapies institution is minimalist, adorned only with racks of bread that sell out fast. Get there early for a taste of the pan Gallego, made with rye and wheat flours, and the very special pan de tritordeum, a bread loaded with crunch and hearty flavor from its unique namesake grain.

La Miguiña

Get to this Tetuán neighborhood favorite early in the day to catch the fresh pastries coming out of the oven—especially the torrijas if they are ready, and an avocado toast on their pan levain if not (yes, avocado toast is a thing in Spain now, too).

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In How to Cook a Wolf, M.F.K. Fisher famously wrote, “It’s a poor figure of a man who will say that eggs are fit only to be eaten at breakfast.” Thankfully, no such men exist in Madrid, where eggs are invariably lunch and dinner fare.

Spaniards consume an average of 254 eggs a year, more than their French, German, and British brethren—and who could blame them? Here in Madrid, a city I’ve called home for three years, even the simplest huevo frito is an artform with golden, lacy edges and an impossibly fiery yolk. Spanish-style revueltos, soft and spreadable scrambles filled with asparagus tips or garlic scapes or whatever’s in season, bear little resemblance the parched diner eggs I grew up eating stateside. If eggs were this good everywhere, we’d have a global shortage.

The egg (or the chicken, depending on your worldview) likely arrived in Spain by way of Asia in the Iron Age, and it’s been a fixture in the Spanish diet ever since. On the very first page of Don Quixote, Spain‘s greatest novel, we learn that the Ingenious Knight savors a plate of duelos y quebrantos, a Manchegan chorizo-and-egg specialty, every Saturday. Even today, eggs are so ingrained in Spain’s social fabric that Castilian slang brims with egg-related expressions: Molar un huevo means something is “the absolute best,” while being hasta los huevos (“up to one’s eggs”) means you’re positively fed up.

Of course, nobody thinks about literature or linguistics when ordering a plate of fried eggs or warm slice of tortilla española: The hedonistic pleasures of the egg need no context. But all huevos aren’t created equal, so it pays to know where locals go for their fix.

Casa Lucio : Huevos estrellados

Literally “bashed eggs,” huevos estrellados are a beautiful disaster consisting of fried eggs mushed up with piping-hot french fried potatoes. Ask any Madrileño where to find the city’s best rendition, and chances are you’ll end up at Casa Lucio, an old-timey tavern on Cava Baja where ironed white napkins hang from suited waiters’ wrists. Despite the starchy ambiance, there’s nothing highbrow about Lucio’s unceremonious huevos. Line cooks joke that they are the “worst thing on the menu” for their homespun simplicity, but thousands of guests who return, year after year, for this specific dish would beg to differ.

Syklar: Tortilla española

Madrileños love getting into armchair debates over where to find the best tortilla in town. My top pick (after three years of grueling field research) is Sylkar, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the northern Chamberí district. Their locally famous, hubcap-sized omelet starts with slices of yellow, waxy Monalisa potatoes, cooked in heady Andalusian olive oil until they’ve all but disintegrated. They are then drained of excess grease, combined with caramelized onions and beaten eggs, and returned to a screaming-hot pan for a minute until the exterior is just set. The cooks here know that a top-grade tortilla—like a great brownie—should be unapologetically undercooked. “We do a swift business with delivery companies UberEats and Glovo,” owner Alfredo García García said as he slid a fresh tortilla from pan to plate without so much as looking down. “People around here, instead of ordering pizza for soccer matches, they call in a tortilla or two.”

Casa Paco : Sopa castellana

A soul-warming soup native to Castilla whose sum equals more than its parts (garlic, bread, ham, and egg), sopa castellana is a peasantly panacea for Madrid’s cold, wet winters. The dish has such a rustic reputation that most restaurants don’t even put it on the menu. Casa Paco, an abuelo-filled bar that once served the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Ava Gardner, and Orson Welles, is a notable exception. A house specialty since day one, the tavern’s sopa castellana stands out for its velvety texture and deep, nutty flavor, qualities manager Alfonso García attributes to hand-selected jamón serrano from Salamanca (sourced by a charcutería a few doors down) and a day’s rest in the fridge. “The other night, we had a guy order sopa castellana for dessert,” García told me with a laugh in the low-ceilinged dining room. “It’s really that good.”

The post In Madrid, It’s All About the Egg appeared first on Saveur.

Afew nights ago, I met some friends for dinner at Entre Cáceres y Badajoz, a dusty old taberna in Madrid where black-hoofed hams dangle overhead and olive pits crunch underfoot. When we ordered a round of cañas (local slang for half-pints), they arrived with a surprise: a hefty scoop of steaming paella. ¡Qué aproveche! the bartender said with a wink as he plunged a handful of cocktail forks into the sunny mound. Like magic, with every ensuing drink came another mouth-watering new dish: There were potatoes dusted with smoked paprika, fried squid a la romana, mussels in vinaigrette, and weighty slabs of tuna-filled empanada. When we finally wobbled back out onto the street, we’d eaten the equivalent of a meal for the paltry price of the beers we drank. Such is the miracle of the tapeo. The origins of the tapa are murky, but legend has it that the term was coined by Alfonso XIII on a junket to Andalusia. When the king stopped in Cádiz at a bar called El Ventorrillo del Chato (still open today) for a glass of sherry, a clever waiter draped the rim with a slice of ham to keep bugs and grit out of the wine. The combination pleased the king so much that he ordered another glass “con tapa”—with a lid—and, so it goes, the tapa was born.

Of course, the idea that a Spanish head of state invented preprandial snacking is absurd, but the essence of the tapa—as a gratis, unfussy bite washed down by an alcoholic beverage—still resonates across Spain and beyond (a Google search for tapas produces 197 million results). Even as tapas have become unrecognizably cheffy and expensive, greasy spoons like Entre Cáceres y Badajoz remain packed to the gills night after night.

That’s because they serve comfort food for free, a winning formula by any standard. For curious eaters traveling around Spain, the best part is that the tapas served at these sorts of abuelo bars reflect each region’s terroir. Along the coast, you’ll find platefuls of garlicky white anchovies or tender octopus, natural bedfellows of maritime white wines like manzanilla and albrariño, respectively. Head inland, and drinks come with a riot of ruddy cured meats and local cheeses. Though certain tapas are universal (hola, tortilla española), almost every locale has its own delectable specialty worth sidling up to the bar for. Here is a city-by-city guide to fifteen of our favorites.

Madrid: Patatas Bravas

Patatas bravas, “fierce potatoes” shrouded in a piquant, brick-red sauce, grace tapas bars the country over, but to try the dish in its birthplace, you have to head to the Spanish capital. Since the 1960s, when bravas became popular, rival tabernas have bickered over who makes the best spuds in town—and whether tomato is permissible in the famous paprika-laced sauce.

Where to get them: Docamar, where the bravas are so transcendent that they’ll make you understand why the UN included them in The Potato Around the World in 200 Recipes.

Barcelona: Pa amb Tomàquet

Mediterranean summer on a plate, pa amb tomàquet is the dead-simple Catalan invention of hot bread rubbed with garlic and ripe tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil. Josep Lladonosa i Giró, a Barcelona-based chef and food historian, maintains that the dish was created in the early 20th century by railroad workers, who grew tomatoes next to the tracks to moisten the stale bread they carried.

Where to get it: Bodega La Tinaja, a cavernous restaurant in the El Born district whose DIY pa amb tomàquet—components served separately—gives you free rein over how much tomato and garlic to scrape across the crusty bread.

Santiago de Compostela: Empanada Gallega

Empanadas are such an integral part of culture in Santiago de Compostela that the flat double-crusted pies are depicted on a 12th-century portico of the city’s cathedral. Empanadas from Santiago de Compostela and the surrounding towns of Galicia are far and away the most prized savory pastries in Spain. They’re irresistibly flaky thanks to a lard-enriched crust, and the fillings can range from chicken to octopus to cockles, which get their subtle sweetness from sofrito, a slow-cooked slump of onions and bell peppers.

Where to get it: Restaurante María Castaña, a granite-walled taberna in the Casco Antiguo where you’ll overhear conversations in Gallego, the local language, while savoring empanadas filled with briny mussels or raisin-studded salt cod.

Cáceres: Migas

Imagine a homemade garlic crouton—crunchy, salty, and heady with olive oil—and now imagine a hundred of them, crushed up and fried with pork belly, chorizo, bell peppers, and smoky paprika. That’s how they make migas in Cáceres, the UNESCO-protected medieval city an hour from the Portuguese border. The dish has roots in Roman and Moorish culinary traditions, but it remains popular throughout inland Spain today because it makes use of stale bread that would otherwise be tossed out.

Where to get it: Eustaquio Blanco, whose extra-crisp migas are crowned with a runny fried egg.

San Sebastián: Gildas

The gilda, a culinary ode to the Rita Hayworth character, is the quintessential first tapa on any txikiteo (Basque tapas crawl). A brochette stacked with olives, anchovies, and pickled piperrak (green chiles), it’s a bracing mouthful designed to smack around your taste buds and whet your appetite. Swallow the gilda in one bite, in accordance with local tradition, or risk getting an eye-roll from the bartender.

Where to get them: Oliyos, an unpretentious bar in the Old Town whose gildas are unapologetically piquant.

La Coruña: Polbo á Feira

Bound by the Atlantic Ocean on three sides, it’s no wonder La Coruña is a seafood lover’s paradise. Here, in the snug marisqueiras that line the cobblestone streets of the Old Town, you can happily slurp down dozens of dayboat-fresh critters—like Arcade oysters, langoustines, and goose barnacles—before tucking into the region’s star dish, polbo á feira. This is octopus at its finest—boiled until tender, snipped into silver dollars over a bed of potatoes, and sprinkled with olive oil and paprika. Classic fair food (hence the name), polbo is meant to be enjoyed with copious cuncas of bone-dry albariño or ribeiro wine.

Where to get it: El Real, a no-nonsense cervecería on the isthmus between the Old and New Towns.

Logroño: Champis

Logroño, situated in the heart of Rioja, may be best known as a wine town, but it takes its “champis” (mushroom canapés) almost as seriously as its vintages. On a screaming-hot griddle behind the bar, cooks first sear the mushroom caps until they begin to wrinkle and brown, then anoint them with garlic-parsley butter and burrow baby shrimp into the nooks where the stems were. Next, three caps are skewered onto a slice of baguette, and listo, the tapa is served. When you take a bite, the saline shrimp play up the meatiness of the mushrooms, whose juices trickle into the bread along with the residual melted butter. (Call me unsophisticated, but I remember that bite far more vividly than any Rioja wine I tasted.)

Where to get it: Bar Soriano, a family-run hole in the wall that cranks out 8,000 “champis” a week.

Puerto de la Cruz: Papas Arrugadas

“Wrinkly potatoes” might not sound especially thrilling, but when you bite into your first papas arrugadas—salt-roasted baby potatoes dunked in a chile-cumin sauce called mojo picón—you’ll be an instant convert. Canarian cuisine straddles Latin American and European traditions, and this dish is no exception with its New World potatoes and Portuguese-style sauce (mojo comes from the Portuguese “molho”).

Where to get them: Arcon Tapas, an indoor-outdoor restaurant on Plaza Concejil whose papas come with two types of fresh-made mojo.

Palma de Mallorca: Tombet

On the island of Mallorca, tombet is inescapable—and that’s a good thing. Served as a light tapa or sidekick to grilled meats and fish, this late-summer specialty akin to ratatouille combines eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes. Yet unlike its French counterpart, which can be gloppy, tombet remains al dente with each vegetable cooked separately.

Where to get it: Es Mutant, a homey restaurant on the outskirts of town yet undiscovered by the tour-bus crowd.

Oviedo: Chorizo a la Sidra

The northerly city of Oviedo is famous for its soul-warming fabadas, or pork-and-bean stews, and hulking cachopos, or fried cheese-and-ham-filled steaks, but when it comes to bar food, chorizo a la sidra—cider-braised sausage—is a (marginally) less soporific bet. Containing just two ingredients, this dish puts the smoky Asturian-style chorizo center stage, though admittedly I’ve been caught spooning up the reduced cider as if it were soup.

Where to get it: Tierra Astur Gascona, the Asturian equivalent of Eataly.

Salamanca: Jamón Ibérico

Chances are you’ve heard about jamón ibérico de bellota, that melt-in-your-mouth Spanish ham derived from acorn-fed pigs; maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to try it. But you haven’t had the full jamón experience until you’ve savored it in situ in Salamanca. The dehesas just south of this ancient Castilian city are the ideal habitat for the Iberian hogs who snuffle along the scrubby forest floor rooting for acorns. Top-quality jamón is a standby tapa at bars around town, even if it’s far from free.

Where to get it: El Mesón de Gonzalo, whose bartenders carve see-through slices from local Carrasco-brand hams.

Sevilla: Spinach and Chickpeas

Ask a Sevillano where to find the city’s best spinach and chickpeas and they’ll invariably point you in the direction of El Rinconcillo. It opened in 1670, and today white-clad waiters still chalk tabs on the wooden horseshoe bar. The historic establishment patented the popular dish decades ago, but the cumin-laced recipe is no doubt a holdover from the Moors and Sephardim who once thrived in the Andalusian city.

Where to get it: El Rinconcillo, where you might even bump into Harrison Ford, a newfound fan of this old-school dish.

Cádiz: Pescaíto Frito

As a general rule, the farther south you go in Spain, the more likely it is that your seafood will be fried instead of boiled, thanks to millennia-old Sephardic influences and an abundance of olive oil. In the port of Cádiz, arguably the oldest city in Western Europe, there’s an entire genre of restaurants called freidurías dedicated to this summery cooking style. Their fryers bubble with diaphanous shrimp fritters, juicy shark nuggets, and thumbnail-sized baby squid. The perfect pairing? A glass of ice-cold manzanilla.

Where to get it: Freiduría Las Flores, especially if you can snag an outdoor table on the Plaza Topete.

Córdoba: Salmorejo

Salmorejo is to gazpacho what cream is to milk. A velvety emulsion of tomatoes, garlic, bread, and olive oil, the chilled soup—native to Córdoba and recognizable for its garnish of diced jamón and hard-boiled egg—is featured on nearly every bar menu. Considering the city reached its golden age at the turn of the 11th century (when it was the largest metropolis in the world), this soup is a relatively recent invention as it hinges on tomatoes, an import from the New World.

Where to get it: Taberna Sociedad Plateros de María la Auxiliadora, a Córdoba institution whose salmorejo stands out for its garnish of DOP Los Pedroches jamón.

León: Cecina

Spain’s answer to beef jerky, cecina is an unsung Castilian delicacy of salt-cured, air-dried beef typical of the province of León. Packing the nuttiness of good jamón and the savory funk of a dry-aged steak, it needs nothing more than a hunk of baguette and some plummy Bierzo wine to be outstanding—but that, of course, doesn’t keep local chefs from finding new ways to cook with it.

Where to get it: El Rebote, where every drink is accompanied by a complimentary cecina-flecked croquette.

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